After spending many hours over the last few weeks fighting/removing malware and malicious code from standard and WordPress websites I thought I should do a general post about web malware.
It may not happen to your website but the chances are good that at some point it will. No website or security system is immune to these attacks.
You should take precautions to protect your site.

It is recommended that you stay up-to-date with the latest version of WordPress. Please note that this can sometimes “break” your theme/template. ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR WEBSITE BEFORE MAKING ANY UPDATES! An update of your theme may solve this problem, however updating the theme can also sometimes cause the need to reconfigure customizations like slideshows, special coding, etc.
Here is a list of security plugins that I highly recommend use on the sites I maintain:
Wordfence – monitors your site for problems and outdated files; you can and should use it to scan for malicious code and files
BruteProtect – protects your site from most cyber attacks and can also monitor your WordPress install, plugins, and themes for updates and automatically update them when possible.
Clef – two-factor authentication – blocks logins from all users other than those legimately registered. Requires some careful selections and an app on your phone.

These plugins can be installed using the Plugins > Add New button in your Dashboard sidebar. Search for them by name.
BruteProtect and Clef require a free account at WordPress.com

Security is a top priority for Google. We invest a lot in making sure that our services use industry-leading security, like strong HTTPS encryption by default. That means that people using Search, Gmail and Google Drive, for example, automatically have a secure connection to Google.

Beyond our own stuff, we’re also working to make the Internet safer more broadly. A big part of that is making sure that websites people access from Google are secure. For instance, we have created resources to help webmasters prevent and fix security breaches on their sites.

We’ve also seen more and more webmasters adopting HTTPS (also known as HTTP over TLS, or Transport Layer Security), on their website, which is encouraging.

For these reasons, over the past few months we’ve been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, encrypted connections as a signal in our search ranking algorithms. We’ve seen positive results, so we’re starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal. For now it’s only a very lightweight signal — affecting fewer than 1% of global queries, and carrying less weight than other signals such as high-quality content — while we give webmasters time to switch to HTTPS. But over time, we may decide to strengthen it, because we’d like to encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web.
In the coming weeks, we’ll publish detailed best practices (it’s in our help center now) to make TLS adoption easier, and to avoid common mistakes. Here are some basic tips to get started:

Decide the kind of certificate you need: single, multi-domain, or wildcard certificate

Use 2048-bit key certificates

Use relative URLs for resources that reside on the same secure domain

Use protocol relative URLs for all other domains

Check out our Site move article for more guidelines on how to change your website’s address

If your website is already serving on HTTPS, you can test its security level and configuration with the Qualys Lab tool. If you are concerned about TLS and your site’s performance, have a look at Is TLS fast yet?. And of course, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to post in our Webmaster Help Forums.

We hope to see more websites using HTTPS in the future. Let’s all make the web more secure!

website trends 2014

Website design is going flat; this trend is being driven by Microsoft Windows 8, Apple’s iOS 7, and Google amongst many others. Gone are the glossy buttons, drop shadows, heavy graphics, etc. The new trends are flat, simple buttons and icons, a focus on text, images only as needed, and responsive layout that adapts to different browsers and devices.

Responsive websites adjust the layout and function automatically to the width of the device. It is much like a grid of blocks which move based on the width of available space. In combination with this responsive design trend, there is flexible navigation based on the device type, and content which expands to the full width of the browser

Mobile-only websites are a fast-growing trend. Mobile sites, usually created as a complement to an existing site, are great for providing quick info, directions, and features like a click-to-call button. The goal of mobile sites are most often immediate sales or contact conversions. Mobile-only websites are especially good for
service-related industries.

Having both a responsive website and a mobile site creates a win-win web presence.

Continuing to gain more of the web-world are Content-Management System (CMS) websites like WordPress, which is currently powering 19% of the world’s websites. These sites make it easy to create and update business-related content. They can also act as a blogging platform making the site more content-rich, which helps drive search traffic to the site. These sites can also be developed using responsive design

7 questions to ask yourself about your website’s visual look

Is my home page visually compelling?

Does my website lead visitors to want to learn more about my
business?

Is it visually consistent with my company’s branding?

Is it easy to navigate? Can first time visitors easily find the information they need?

Does my site look out-of-date?

Does my website use Flash for videos or a slideshow?
(If yes, you need a redesign because Flash won’t play on iPhones and iPads.)

Does it look good on all types of devices: desktop, laptop, tablet,
and smartphone?

Does it integrate with my social media marketing such as
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pintrest?

7 questions to ask yourself about your website’s content

Is my website meeting the needs of my customers and, is it positively connecting with those whom I want to reach as new customers?

Does my website tell what is unique and special about my business, setting it above the competition?

Is the content relevant, informative, and targeted to promoting my business?

Is the content well-organized and is there enough information (but not too much)?

Is it consistent with my company’s marketing efforts?

Is the text organized and written with search keywords (SEO) in mind?

Am I sharing my business’ success by having customer reviews on my site and in social media? Last year, consumers’ trust of online reviews has risen to 70%. Television, newspaper, and magazines “trust rank” is about 47%.

Need help with your website?

With your answers to the questions above, we can address what type of website you need, whether it is informational, interactive, mobile, responsive, blog, or ecommerce.
Visit our Home page or Contact us today to talk about your website needs.

The folks at Visual.ly offer a weekly Google Analytics infographic by email. Just sign up for a free Visual.ly account, link your GA account and you’re done. The infographic gives you a quick overview of your stats and shows where you’ve done well and where improvements are needed.

Content published on U.S. Government websites is public domain and can be used as content for your website. A good place to start is at the Small Business Administration site. Oh, and there are are many helpful pages there to help your business as well.

site-image can help you get social with email marketing and facebook social campaigns from Constant Contact.
You can do-it-yourself or we can design your email templates, edit your content, create Facebook “Like” campaigns and more.
We are here to help you get social!Read more about tools, websites, and services for social media marketing.

A Common Keyword Research Mistake

Writing by Nick Stamoulis, Brick Marketing

Depending on the industry your website operates in and the content on your site, there might be hundreds of keywords that you could target with your onsite SEO. Best practice dictates that you only target 2-5 keywords per page, which means you’ll have to get picky. Even if your keyword research was on the right track, you might miss the mark when it comes time to choosing the most appropriate keywords for your site and your SEO goals. One of the most common keyword research mistakes I see is that site owners don’t choose keywords that are specific enough for their website. They are still in the right ballpark, but they didn’t take it all the way and are missing out on valuable SEO opportunities.

Let’s say your company offers B2B lead generation services. Obviously, keywords like “lead generation,” “b2b lead generation” and “lead generation company” are going to be incorporated into your site on various pages. However, these keywords are so broad that you might run into a few issues in your quest to improve your organic SEO. First and foremost, the broader the keyword the larger a search volume it will have, which means more companies are competing for that keyword. This makes it much harder to rank well in the search engines.

Secondly, broad keywords like “lead generation,” while they could potentially drive a lot of traffic to your site, they might not be sending the RIGHT traffic to your site. What kind of lead gen services does your company actually offer? Live telephone leads? Online leads? Do you specialize in a particular niche like real estate or finance? Those broad keywords might accurately reflect your business, but chances are there are quite a few long tail keywords that are even more appropriate.

Why is it so important to target those long tail keywords? Site owners often ask me why they should target a keyword that only gets 250 searches a month when they could target one that gets 2,500 searches. The answer is simple—those long tail keywords are going to bring a more targeted visitor to your site. Someone searching for “lead generation” could be looking for a multitude of things and might not be ready to buy anytime soon. Broad keywords are typically used when visitors are still in their research mode and are “shopping around.” However, if someone found your website after searching for “b2b live lead phone transfers,” chances are they know exactly what they are looking for and are looking to make a purchasing decision soon. You might only get 10 visitors each month by targeting “b2b live lead phone transfers,” but they are a much more targeted and highly qualified visitor.

Would you rather get more visitors or more qualified leads? The keywords you target are going to dictate the kind of searchers that find your site. By incorporating long tail keywords into your site you’ll get better traffic, not just more. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can only target keywords with a large search volume. While it is important to incorporate broad keywords into your site’s content, don’t forget to add those long tail keywords!

If people are looking for a local business these days, they don’t turn to the Yellow Pages. They head for the search engines and type in the service, product, or kind of establishment that they are looking for in addition to the location that they are in. While the search engines continue to improve their personalized results and often can guess where someone is located, a typical searcher will still type in “hairstylist in X location” or “X location hairstylist”. If your website isn’t optimized for local search, it won’t be found in the search engines, and you will lose out on business to competitors. Here are 4 guidelines for local business owners to remember when optimizing a website: